It's Good to be Green

I have a few Bibles. Okay, so I have a few more than a few but they’re all different versions so that’s okay, right? Anyway, the one I use the most currently is my NIV/The Message Parallel. If you haven’t seen a parallel Bible before, it’s where two different versions are on each page, parallel. Yep, makes sense. I like it because while I love the wake-me-up different-ness (yes, I’m making up words) of The Message, I always find myself having to go back to the ‘real Bible’ to find out what the same verses are there. Having them parallel makes that incredibly easy.

I was reading Romans 15 the other day and The Message version of verse 13 stuck out to me:

May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!

I like that. It’s inspiring. And a great prayer to pray for people. I especially like the ‘God of green hope’ bit.

Now, personally, I have no idea where the green description comes from. None of the other versions I looked up had any colours described but for some reason The Message wanted it in there. 

Look up the word ‘green’ in a dictionary and there are lots of meanings.

The colour, obviously. Or that a person is feeling sick. Or that an area is designated for plants and growth. That something is full of plants, like a green salad. Or that something is unripe. And a bunch of other variations of those.

It can also mean inexperienced or naïve, which is the one that immediately came to mind when I read the Romans verse.

We all know someone who’s been ‘green’. If not personally, in a movie or something. That one person who turns up all excited while the rest of you are standing around smirking. Give it a week, kid…

Green hope. Inexperienced hope. Naïve hope.

Sometimes hope involves us being green. Ignoring reality and focusing instead on what could be. The best possibly scenario. Before we get bogged down and discouraged and learn just how impossibly unlikely what we’re hoping for is.

I don’t know about you but my hope tends to feel a little discouraged at times. Usually when I’m focussing on all the reasons something is never going to happen. My hope is strongest when I ignore reality and reason and focus instead on the God who said he could do anything. The God of the impossible. I say, ‘so what?’ to the voices in my head telling me to come back to the real world and cling instead to the God of green hope. It's not always an easy thing to do. Usually quite the opposite. But it's then that hope rises.

So, here’s what I’m praying for you. That the God of green hope would fill you today with joy and peace so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, would brim over with hope.

And that you’d have the courage to be green.

Faith and Photography

I’m not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination but I do take a lot of photos. It’s pretty rare a day goes by without me taking a single photo, and even more rare that I’ll just take one whenever I pull out my phone. I go with the idea of take ten photos and delete nine! I used to feel guilty that I took so many, until someone pointed out that it’s just part of who I am as a storyteller. My photos tell stories just as much as the words I write.

Fortunately, digital cameras (and even better, mobile phones!) make it incredibly easy to capture moments, keep thousands of photos, and delete all the bad ones!

I wondered if I was going to have to delete almost every photo I took the other day. My husband and I took our three kids swimming at the local lagoon. It was our littlest one’s first real swim so, of course, I was taking photos.

Thing was, the sun was so bright, I couldn’t actually see what I was taking photos of. My phone screen was just black. I pointed it in what I hoped was the right direction and clicked the capture button but had no idea whether any of the photos would actually work. For all I knew, they were completely out of focus, if I’d even managed to get people’s heads in to start with.

Looking through the photos later, I was delighted to find that the black screen I’d been looking at when I took the photos had miraculously transformed into gorgeously bright, clear pictures.

I took photos blindly in hope, much like I do a lot of things.

God seems to like asking us to do things without knowing the outcome.

But he also delights in surprising us with outcomes beyond our wildest dreams, where we suddenly look back and everything is clear because, unlike us, God can see what’s going on.

Going in to 2017 has been a weird feeling for me. Usually I get all excited about the new year and all the plans and hopes I have for it. I have this little game I play with myself called ‘I wonder where I’ll be this time next year’. Up till now, I’ve had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen each year. Not everything, of course, but a pretty good idea. I knew if I started a grade at school, I’d finish that same grade by the end of the year. Then there were the years I knew I’d meet the child within me before the end of the year. Fairly predictable.

This year, I was faced with the weird realisation that I had no idea. I could get to the end of 2017 and be standing in exactly the same place I was this New Year’s Eve, ‘nothing’ having changed. Still in this house, my family a year older but still the incredible people they are at the same places they are, me still working on getting my books published.

Or, I could be standing in another house, maybe even in another town, my kids at different schools, my book having a contract (hey, I can hope!) and my life changed entirely. It’s such a strange thing to realise that all could be exactly the same, or completely different. Weird.

Like those photos I took which looked only black at the time, I’m in the dark about what will happen this year. But, I’m believing that, just like those photos, I’ll look back sometime – maybe at the end of this year, maybe in a decade or more – and it’ll all make sense.

Because God sees everything – past, present and future. And he’s got me, my family and my dreams for the future, in his hands.

Going into a new year, I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be.

There are Cheesecake People and there are Salad People, and then there are the Jellybean People

There are Cheesecake People and there are Salad People, and then there are the Jellybean People. I’m a Cheesecake person, but not for the reasons you’d think. I don’t like eating them, but I love making them! They’re just so easy to make look beautiful (and expensive!). Not much effort for a whole heap of class.

Eating? I’d prefer a nice salad over a cheesecake any day. You know, those ones with fancy names like Chargrilled Pumpkin and Feta salad, Roast Green Beans with Sweet Berry Tomatoes, or Peach Pancetta and Mozzarella salad. Yummmmmmm!!!

My sisters-in-law are great at making salads. I should know. Every Christmas I fill my plate with their creations. Last Christmas, my five-year-old daughter skipped the meat, lollies and cakes spread across the table and filled her plate with salad too, if that gives you any idea of how great they looked!

But before the eating comes the inevitable stand around the table and admire each other’s creations. It goes something like this…

“Wow! Check out that salad! That looks awesome! Is that mango in there?”

“Yep.”

“Yum! And that one! Caramelised sweet potato? Seriously? Wow! Can’t wait to try it.”

“It’s just a salad.”

“Ha! My salads consist of badly chopped tomato, iceberg lettuce, carrot and, if you’re lucky, capsicum and cucumber. Nothing like that. I wish I could make salads like that.”

“Yeah, but look at your cheesecake! I can’t believe you made that! It looks like something you’d buy from a cake shop.”

“It is pretty but really, it’s heaps easier than it looks. Anyone could make it.”

“I couldn’t.”

And so it goes on. We each think our creation is the easiest thing in the world to make, while the thought of making the other thing has us completely stressing!

Cheesecake People and Salad People.

Then the Jellybeans turned up. No baking or mixing to make them whatsoever but hours of fun since the giant bag of crazy flavoured Jellybeans didn’t come with a cheat sheet of what each flavour was. It wouldn’t have been the Christmas it was without the Jellybean Person.

Or the Chocolate Ball Person, or the Pizza Scroll Person. Or the ‘I Just Provided the House’ (but we really know she did way more than that) Person.

See, Christmas lunch wouldn’t be Christmas lunch if everyone didn’t bring the bit they were good at. I bring cheesecakes because, believe me, even ducks who eat anything turn up their beaks at my salads. But I can do cheesecakes. My sisters bring salads because they hate baking but their salads are incredible. My brother brought jellybeans and a stack of laughter. And Mum and Dad provided the house which really is a big deal since we’d all be sitting on the street if not for that. I don’t think even cheesecake would taste good sitting on the side of the street.

Nor would a whole table full of cheesecakes make a very good lunch. Or a whole table of jellybeans. Or an empty house with no food. 

Pretty sure you’ve got the idea by now but in case you haven’t, here it is:

The world needs you and your gifts.

Whether you’re good at baking, tossing a salad together, buying jellybeans, opening the door to your house, finding the right music to set the scene, cleaning up, organising everyone else (or footing the bill to enable them to do something they might not have otherwise been able to do!), telling a joke, being adorable, filling the silence, providing the silence, or turning on some lights, you’re needed.

Got that? You’re needed. You. Your exact set of gifts. That thing you can do? God needs it. The world needs it. Something you find incredibly easy to do really is a challenge for someone else, and vice versa.

It might be nothing to you, but it means the world to someone else.